Crypto Hacks Surge to Record $1.26 Billion in Third Quarter

Crypto Hacks: $1.26 Billion in the Third Quarter

The third quarter of 2026 saw a significant increase in crypto hacks, with over $1.26 billion in damages reported by the security firm CertiK. This is a new high for the year, with the previous peak being $648 million in April. The quarterly figure is roughly half of the total $2.68 billion in damages reported by CertiK for the entire year.

The largest single case of the quarter was the attack on the trading platform Bitget, which resulted in losses of around $387.5 million. The Liquid Network, a sidechain built on Bitcoin, was also hit hard, with losses of approximately $320 million. However, in the case of Liquid Network, most of the funds were recovered.

The average damage per incident increased to around $5.1 million, up from $3.7 million in the previous quarter. This suggests that the successful attacks were larger in scale, rather than the number of attacks increasing. The most common route of attack was the theft of private keys, rather than a breach of underlying cryptography.